


The foreigner in my mind

by Tyrelingkitten



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Amnesia, First Love, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Mystery, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrelingkitten/pseuds/Tyrelingkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU  - Lay lost everything when someone broke into his apartment and hauled everything away. While the police were doing the investigation of stolen items, he bunked at a friend’s apartment.<br/>But then strange people started following him around. Apparently, the thieves had actually broken into and obliterated the wrong apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The foreigner in my mind

The front door stood ajar when Yixing stumbled out of the elevator, carrying his briefcase in one hand and balancing his weekly grocery shopping bags in the other. He had already readied his keys, hand holding the metal near the key hole when his mind registered something was odd with the door. He stared at it in confusion. It stood open. Had he forgotten to lock it behind him before he went to work this morning? But he was sure he had taken a moment to twist the lock shut this morning—his neighbor and co-worker, Lu Han, had been right there patiently waiting next to him, reminding him to turn the key twice.  
  
He retracted the hand with the keys and used his shoulder to push the door open. It creaked softly as it revealed the cramped main hall of his apartment. Cramped might be exaggerating at the moment because now it looked too spacious. Too empty. Too neat. The last time Yixing had done some top-down cleaning was last year, about eight months ago, and he was very sure he had a shoe rack right next to the door, with all his various sneakers, slippers and old shoes wedged together in a bulging semblance of order. A very messy shoe rack. And Yixing was pretty sure he had an old, ratty cat paw print doormat waiting for him one meter away from the front door, and a small coat rack next to the kitchen door. The hallway looked empty without them.  
  
Had he stepped into the wrong apartment?  
  
Yixing took a step back and checked the neighboring numbers and appointed name tags. Lu Han was still living on his left side. Taeyeon-sshi was on his right. He then checked his front door number—yep, still 236, though his name tag was empty. His landlord, Minseok-sshi, had promised to replace the old one after some brats had stolen it to tease the dogs in the pound next to their apartment building.  
  
So what the heck?  
  
Yixing pursed his lips as he stepped back into his apartment, slipping out of his shoes and walked into the kitchen… he froze when there is only an empty sink to greet him. Last night’s dishes were gone, his set of strawberry-printed glasses was gone, his porcelain chopsticks also, even his trusty aluminum pot grandma had carefully selected as a housewarming gift. There were signs of the fridge standing next to the sink—grease and rusty lines still marred the tiled floor forming a rectangular shape. And then there was the space where his kitchen table once stood.  
  
He turned around, his head spinning with questions and checked the living-room, the bedroom, the bathroom… even under the toilet. His bed? Gone. The TV? Gone. Gone. His fish tank? Gone. Even his week old stinky laundry was nowhere in sight. When he couldn’t even find his own cat in the empty apartment, he finally lost it. Dropping his bags and staring wide-eyed around him, all he could only utter was a shriek, “Oh my god!”  
  
He was evicted… No… not really, he had already paid the landlord two days ago! He was never late with his rents either. Had Minseok decided to kick him out after the payment? But Minseok never had any problems with him. Why? But still nothing seemed to be added up for seeing his apartment all emptied out.  
It took a few frantic banging on Lu Han’s door for Yixing to understand the implication of the empty apartment. He got robbed. Picked clean. Literally of everything except for the clothes he was wearing at the moment, the groceries in his hand and his laptop. He felt violated.  
  
  
\-----------  
  
  
  
“Baozi—I mean, Minseok said he hadn’t ordered anyone to throw your stuff away. And besides that, he can’t do that on his own accord without a prior court notice,” Lu Han frowned after ending his phone call to the landlord. “We should call the police for this.”  
  
“I’d tried. While you were busy flirting with Minseok.” Lu Han opened his mouth to protest “I wasn’t!”, but Yixing ignored his indignant remark to curl up further in Lu Han’s couch, “They said they were on their way.”  
  
Lu Han sighed, scratched the back of his head and then made his way to the kitchen door when he couldn’t dispel the heavy situation. “Right. Then I’ll get you something to eat,”  
  
Yixing didn’t feel like eating despite having skipped lunch that day. He only curled up further into the couch and used one of the couch pillows to cover his face. Please let this all be just another nightmare.  
  
The police came after a half hour of waiting. Three of them. Looking all foreboding in their matching black coats. Their almost matching gigantic heights didn’t help either.  
They surveyed the empty apartment and then started questioning Yixing, Lu Han, the landlord and the other neighbors. The procedure was long and daunting—where were you around so-so hours? Did you see any suspicious people loitering around the building and the halls? Did you have plans of moving out any time soon? Who also had the spare key? Any ex-lovers to note of? Financial problems? Know anyone who wants to rob you? Had your cat ever run off before?  
  
Yixing lost track of whatever he was saying and by the time he had explained how he had found his apartment for the third time, frustration ate at his mind and boiled down in his gut. He had just lost everything in one night, can’t they just start raiding the garbage cans or something? But apparently, that wasn’t an option. The Forensics had to be involved in this. To find fingerprints and hair samples. To collect evidence. And because it’s the start of the weekend, the members of the forensics department weren’t up for investigation yet, until the following Monday. For the time being, apartment 236 was off limits until further notice and Yixing had to look for another dwelling.  
Once the police were done questioning related parties, they invited Yixing to come back to the station the following day to get his official report on the robbery.  
  
Lu Han graciously offered him the couch. Yixing felt forever grateful for having a friend like Lu Han, someone who was willing to give up his private space for a friend in need. Otherwise, Yixing wasn’t too sure how he would survive the aftermath.  
Yixing hadn’t slept a wink that night. His mind was too busy coming up with solutions to his current misfortune, too busy running in circles on how to tell his family back in China that he had lost everything, too busy to actually think about resting.    
  
  
  
\---------  
  
  
  
Yixing fell asleep through sheer exhaustion around 4 AM. But then after a half hour of dozing, he jerked awake at the sound of the clock ticking too loud, the air conditioning whirring too close and his head imitating conga drums in a parade. Though he hadn’t eaten much of Lu Han’s homemade sweet and sour dishes, with the way his stomach was rolling uncomfortably he still felt like throwing up. Yixing was already making his way to the bathroom when the first wave of nausea hit him.  
  
Lu Han’s bathroom smelt of ocean breeze shower gel and Gillette after shave. If Yixing even glanced up to his left he would see the pale shower stall screen Lu Han had received from a friend. It had cute cats in a pile displayed all over the plastic screen.     
  
Oh god, Cat. Where did they take the little guy? The thought of his spoiled cat thrown away somewhere, without any shelter or food, made Yixing even more miserable. He quickly washed his face and his mouth, avoiding his reflection above the sink, and headed for the front door. As an afterthought, Yixing looked around for the telephone table and scribbled a quick note on Lu Han’s apple-shaped post-it notebook:  
Looking for Cat, don’t worry about me. Call me if you want anything else.  
Yixing.  
  
He then grabbed his coat and zipped up, breezily walking out of the apartment. He made sure he put on the safety lock on and then used Lu Han’s spare key to lock the door from the outside.  
  
“Cat. Here, kitty, kitty,” Yixing cooed as he wandered around the corridors, looked over the balconies, checked behind potted plants and the air vents in the ceiling. He hoped Cat hadn’t ended up in the garbage, dead and mangled… shuddering at the horrible image, Yixing casually tried to look for any sign of blood. When the vain hope had vanished of finding Cat alive in the building, Yixing’s legs carried him back to his own empty apartment. Maybe Cat hadn’t been at home when the robbers raided his home. Maybe Cat came back home and was off sleeping in the kitchen. Pushing the door open to his apartment, Yixing blinked as he realized the lights were already on and he had a night visitor sitting on the floor with Cat curled up nicely in his lap.  
  
“I was beginning to wonder when you’d show up here.” The visitor flashed him a small smile, his thick eyebrows looked less intimidating as they relaxed.  
  
“Wh-what? Who are you? What the heck are you doing in my apartment?” Yixing stammered. A thief? Coming back for something more? What else is there to steal? He willed his legs to move forward dammit, to give the stranger some quick thrashing, but his body felt frozen standing at the front door.  
  
The other man sighed, picking up Cat carefully into his arms and then tried to stand up, looking cool and tall. “Ah yes, I forgot. You don’t know me. Yet.” He sounded almost sad. Yixing wasn’t sure if he heard that right. “Why are you doing this to me?”  
  
Yixing glared at him. “What do you mean? Did you come back to steal my cat as well?”  
  
The tall stranger blinked at him, twice, before he let out an amused chuckle. “Why would I want to steal your fur ball? Although if you want I can always take him off your hands. You complain too much about Cat’s selfishness.”  
  
“This isn’t a funny matter. I’m asking you again, who are you? What are you doing in my apartment? And how did you know I complain about him anyway. Are you some kind of a stalker? Did you clean out my apartment for your sick fantasies?”  
  
“Wait no, I didn’t clean out your apartment. I’m not some weirdo…” Kris paused when he saw the dubious look Yixing gave him and gave up defending himself, “Okay, fine. My name is… Kris. Not a weirdo. Or a stalker. This might sound weird, but… we used to know each other before you fell off the face of the planet and ended up here without any memories.”  
  
“What.”  
  
“You were in some accident and couldn’t take it anymore and everything was too stressful and then you decided to erase your memories in order to start anew and,”  
  
“I don’t believe this.”  
  
“It’s true. Look, Lay-”  
  
“Who’s Lay?”  
  
“Your real name. Lay is your real name.”  
  
“No, my name is Zhang Yixing. And you must have mistaken me for someone else.”  
  
“… Look, I have evidence.”  
  
“What evidence?”  
  
Kris wordlessly slipped a gloved hand into one of his coat pockets and pulled out a wallet. He paused as if debating whether it was safe to show Yixing something or not. With a strange guarded look on his face, Kris stepped forward to flip open his wallet and showed Yixing.  
  
Yixing visibly jerked back when he saw his own face smiling back at him from the picture. With Kris standing behind him, his arms around the-Yixing-in-the-photo-his shoulders in a back embrace and matching the-Yixing-in-the-photo-his grin. What is this? When was this taken?  
  
“They cleaned out the wrong apartment, you know.” Kris said suddenly, closing his wallet to stuff it back into his coat.  
  
“Huh?” Yixing’s head started whirling around again.  
  
Kris gave him a sad smile. “They were supposed to clean out apartment 286 instead of 236, you know. They cleaned out the wrong one instead.”  
  
“Who’s they?”  
  
“Your family. Your real family. Not the ones from China, mind you.” Kris added in an afterthought. “Your family must have read the numbers and the signs wrong.”  
  
“What do you mean not my family? The ones in China raised me. They even have my baby pictures. And whose apartment is 286?”  
  
“… mine actually.” Kris admitted after a long silence and stepped forward to decrease the distance between himself and Yixing, “You weren’t supposed to be involved in this. You’ve made it perfectly clear before you erased your memories.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“You were never meant to. As Yixing, that is. But as Lay,” Kris gave him an almost wounded look. “You wanted out.”  
  
“What language are you trying to speak? You’re not making sense.” Yixing complained but Kris thrust Cat into his chest to stop himself from speaking anymore and raised his hand to almost brush the Yixing’s fringe to one side, only to stop and visibly jerking back, guiltily pulling himself away.  
  
“I’ve said enough for today. Good night, Yixing. Please forget everything I’d said.” Kris brushed past Yixing and was out of the door before Yixing could stop him. Yixing followed the other man out of the door, but when he looked outside his apartment, the corridor was empty. He frowned at the empty hall, his head throbbed harder in rhythm and he hugged Cat closer to his chest.  
  
“If you didn’t want me to find out, you shouldn’t have talked to me at all,” Yixing muttered, something hollow settling down in the pit of his stomach. His chest suddenly exploded with pangs of unmentionable heat.

**Author's Note:**

> TheNekoTalks:
> 
> prompt is taken from writer’s digest website. The requirement was supposed to be 500 words but as you can see… the story became a monster… D: And very much un-beta’ed. I’ll ask someone to read this over when I’m done hiding… and oh so I have this odd notion… why everyone calls Zhang Yixing, just Yixing and Lu Han is Lu Han, when we all know Yixing is Yixing’s given name and Han is Lu Han’s given name. Whut?
> 
>  
> 
> I've been playing around with this general idea for almost a week or two now. Why is it so hard to continue this? I've only the first part of the next section out.
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer: don’t own these people. This is work of fiction, no blasphemy intended for writing about real people.


End file.
